


Four Times Kara Danvers Caught Lena Luthor (And One Time She Didn't)

by UniverseNil



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Arithmetic, Climbing Gym, F/F, Mandatory Business Cocktails, Mice, Physics, SuperCorp, Wine, falling, gravity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-24 15:21:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21340387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseNil/pseuds/UniverseNil
Summary: Kara Danvers has a knack for being in the right place at the right time, until she doesn't.
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 24
Kudos: 431





	1. Arithmetic

** _Arithmetic_ **

The first time Lena Luthor was caught by Kara Danvers, she didn’t know it had happened. 

A group of Cadmus goons had managed to make their way into her office. And in the midst of an altercation out on the balcony, Lena went over the railing. 

There wasn’t much she could do at that point. 

_I wonder how long it’ll take?_

Within a second, she’d already be falling more than fast enough to yank her arms out of her sockets if she tried to grab at a lower railing. Thirty-two feet per second, to be exact. 

_Let’s see, one half 9.8 meters per second per second times t squared plus v-noght times t… Probably fair to approximate v-nought as zero, so that’s two x equals 9.8 t squared, or 2x over 9.8, call it 10, equals t squared, so t equals the square root of 2x over 10… _

Thinking about the mathematics of it all was almost a meditative exercise. 

_My office is on the 43rd floor, the floor-to-floor height is 12 feet, so that’s about three and two-thirds meters per floor for a total fall distance of… just under 160 meters? Is that right? God, if I hit the ground before calculating how long it’ll take me to get there because of fucking unit conversions… Twice 160 over 10 is 32… The square root of that is somewhere between five and si—_

Her train of thought came to an abrupt halt as strong arms scooped her out of mid-air. Lena gasped, instinctively winding her own arms around the person’s neck. It took her a moment to gather her wits, but she quickly recognized the blue and red uniform, the blonde hair, and the piercing blue eyes as belonging to National City’s resident superhero. 

Supergirl slowed gradually to a stop so as not to jar her. 

“Shit, I think I would have just hit terminal velocity!” Lena blurted out. “No, crap, wind resistance! Is that linear with velocity or squared? Fuck! My office isn’t high enough for this much arithmetic if they’re going to throw in unit conversions too!” 

The superhero’s eyebrows rose. 

“Uhh, well, Miss Luthor, luckily you didn’t have to find out about that terminal velocity thing, I guess?” 

“Shit, fuck, sorry! Sorry! Yes!” Lena closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and let it back out as they ascended toward her balcony. Her boarding school manners slowly reasserted themselves. “Thank you for catching me, and saving my life, Supergirl.” 

“No problemo.” Kara grinned at the flustered CEO cradled in her arms. “Now let’s go beat us up some goons, yeah Ms. Luthor?” 

**** 


	2. Mice

** _Mice_ **

The number of people in the world who ever knew that Lena Luthor was scared of mice could be counted on one hand, and two of them were dead. 

Lillian and Lex obviously were aware, since they had known Lena from childhood. 

Jack Spheer had learned it the day Biomax’s special shipment of lab mice had arrived in a less-than-secure box. (“You do science on mice all day long,” he had laughed. “I don’t get why it’s different when they poke their little noses through a hole in a cardboard box and run around the garage.” “It just _is_,” she had replied from atop the lab bench, mortified. Regardless, the mice had been contaminated for experimental purposes, and so were rounded up and exchanged for a new set.) 

And now: Kara Danvers. 

Lena would later come to learn that the mice had been a problem in Kara’s apartment for several weeks. An elderly neighbor had been leaving food out, and the building was poorly sealed. Kara, of course, was too sweet to complain. 

One moment, she was standing in the kitchen sipping a glass of wine and watching Kara prepare an absurd quantity of stir fry. (“You’ll never be able to eat all that before it spoils, Kara,” she had chastised. Years later, Kara would remind her of that remark, and they would both laugh.) 

The next moment, she had glimpsed a small furry creature bolting across the living room. Before her brain could engage, she shrieked, simultaneously grabbing at her best friend and jumping off the floor slightly. To her utter astonishment, Kara caught her effortlessly. 

(“Don’t you use mice in lab work?” Kara teased her later that evening. “I pay _other people_ to use mice in lab work,” Lena corrected. “I only look at them from outside the cage.” Technically she _avoided looking_ at _stock photos_ of mice in PowerPoint presentations from L-Corp’s Biotech division these days. The phobia had intensified since her time at the startup in the garage.) 

Lena stared at her friend in shock. 

“You’re stronger than you look,” she finally blurted out. She could feel Kara’s biceps bulging against her. How had she never noticed before that her best friend was _ripped?_

“Uhh…” 

The mouse disappeared, and Kara gently set Lena back on her feet. She ran around the apartment, shoving crumpled aluminum foil into gaps in the baseboards to keep any more furry interlopers from disrupting their evening. Lena watched and tried to ignore the warm tingles running up and down her body. 

**** 


	3. Wine

** _Wine_ **

It had been a bad week. 

First, Lillian had shown up with no warning, flounced into Lena’s office, stirred up no end of trouble at L-Corp, and then gotten away scot-free _again_. 

Members of L-Corp’s data security team were implicated in this latest scheme, so Lena had no choice but to lock all of them out of the system until things were sorted. Kara’s sister had shown up from the “FBI” with a squad of techies to help unwind the mess. Lena had met FBI Agents before, and whatever the fuck Alex Danvers might be, that sure wasn’t it. 

Lena wasn’t in a position to ask too many questions though. Her finance team was breathing down her neck that work-hours lost were dollars lost, frantically revising quarterly earnings downward every time she turned around. 

By Thursday, things had been ironed out, and a quarter of the data security team had been fired, three of them with enough evidence that they were enjoying unemployment from the comfort of county lockup. The rest had been cleared and were back at work. 

Friday was supposed to be better: Lena had been looking forward to participating in a “Women in Technology” panel at a conference at the National City Convention Center. 

Unfortunately she was the _only_ woman on the seven-person panel. 

It was forty-five minutes of trying to get a word in edgewise as Morgan Edge and Maxwell Lord blathered about how women’s innate gentle qualities made them the obvious choice for always taking the notes in meetings. 

So when she made it back to her apartment and could finally peel the professional smile off her face, who could blame her if she got into the wine? 

She was a bottle and a half in, on an empty stomach and on top of two Mandatory Business Cocktails, when a knock came at the door. _Shit! Movie night!_

(“Sorry your week’s been so rotten,” Kara had said at lunch on Thursday. “Want to come over and watch _The Princess Bride_ tomorrow after your panel thing?” “Sure,” Lena had agreed. “But let’s do it at mine? I know you like my 80” OLED.”) 

Kara had blushed, but eagerly accepted the invite. And now she was at the door. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Lena stumbled across the living room, tripping over the heels she’d carelessly discarded upon her arrival home. “Just a second, Kara!” She snagged the heels in one hand and set them down in foyer. 

She opened the door to find her best friend laden with takeout. 

“Shit, I’m so sorry, darling! I completely forgot about our plans! Come in, come in!” 

“Are you sure?” Kara seemed hesitant. “We can reschedule if you need to…” 

“No, no, honestly, this is exactly what I need. It was just another shitty fucking day to cap off a shitty fucking week.” 

Lena turned to head back into her apartment and somehow, midturn, she managed to trip over the same pair of heels, _again_. And this time, her balance was off enough that she wasn’t going to catch herself. 

She braced for impact (and possibly the ER), but somehow, Kara had set down the food and was catching her just inches from the floor, in a great whoosh of air. 

The two were frozen for a long moment, in a deep tango dip. Lena swallowed. _I never realized quite what a beautiful shade of blue Kara’s eyes are…_

Kara finally came to her senses and pulled Lena back up. Neither friend could bring themselves to look at the other. Eventually, Kara laughed awkwardly, which was somehow the magic that made Lena relax. 

“Thank you for catching me, Kara. I’ve been in the wine a little…” She flushed. 

“Sure thing, Lena. Anytime.” She cleared her throat. “Uh, should I plate this up and we can start that movie?” 

**** 


	4. Climbing Gym

** _Climbing Gym_ **

The _excuse_ Lena gave was that between the assassination attempts and the kidnapping attempts, improving her balance and physical fitness couldn’t be anything but a good thing. 

The _actual reason_ she dragged Kara to the climbing gym was that it was a good opportunity to ogle her friend’s muscles (and, if she were honest with herself, ass), and also she had overheard the cute new barista at Noonan’s telling a coworker that it was a super gay sport. For the ladies at least. And pun possibly intended on the “super.” Lena was still up in the air on that. 

She was also up in the air in a more literal sense. 

Kara had cheerfully joined her at the gym, and swarmed up the routes with no apparent effort. Lena, on the other hand, was drenched in sweat, dusted with chalk, and currently stuck in what the guy at the front desk had referred to as a “chimney.” Her right foot was flat against the wall in its too-tight shoe, and the left was wobbling on a hold about the size of a dime. 

Her hands were likewise braced flat on the wall on either side. Kara was belaying her from the ground below, carefully taking up slack as Lena made her way toward the top of the route. 

Or, in the current scenario, calling up cheerful advice as Lena stayed stuck in one spot. 

_I’m a certified genius_, she told herself. _I am the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. I can figure this out._ Logically, she had four limbs, and she was going to have to move at least one of them. She just wasn’t sure how she was going to stay on the wall if she did. 

The wobble in her left foot was growing worse. (The guy at the front desk had wandered over and was chatting up Kara. “We call that ‘sewing machine leg.’”) It was either stay put and definitely fall where she was, or give it her best shot and probably fall trying. And Luthors did not give up. 

She focused on a handhold three feet above her head. If she could just get a little momentum, she could reach it and move her feet somewhere more stable to rest. 

She lunged. 

And she missed. 

Unfortunately, the gym employee had distracted Kara just slightly, and she hadn’t pulled up the extra slack in the rope as Lena moved upward. She still held the rope in a braking position, but Lena built up enough momentum to yank Kara off the ground with a squawk. The two best friends were on a collision course. 

They ended up dangling ten feet above the ground, Kara’s face smashed into Lena’s boobs. 

_I guess that barista knew what she was talking about!_

**** 


	5. Hypothesis

** _Hypothesis_ **

The fifth time, Lena meant to do it. 

She and Kara were in the something-more-than-friends-but-not-quite-girlfriends stage of their relationship. More often than not, movie nights meant ignoring the film in favor of trading kisses and dozing off on the couch together. Someday soon, they’d have a serious conversation about what it meant, but not yet. 

And kisses meant that Kara’s _glasses_ were coming off more and more frequently. And the ponytail was coming undone. Lena couldn’t help but notice a strong resemblance to a certain superhero. And on the rare occasions that they resumed watching the movie, she also couldn’t help but notice that Kara didn’t seem to actually _need_ the glasses. 

Ever the scientist, Lena devised an experiment. 

It was a quiet Saturday evening. For once, Lena hadn’t been called into the office to deal with any disasters, and Kara hadn’t run off on one of her questionable emergencies. (“Alex left her space heater on.” “Snapper needs fifty more words on my last article before CatCo Magazine goes to press.” Or, Lena’s favorite: “James needs me to to bring him this pencil. It’s, um, a special pencil.”) 

It was just a long, lazy Saturday, spent napping, catching up on their TV shows, and making out. They had finally extracted themselves from the couch to figure out dinner; Kara had just put the casserole dish in the oven to bake and turned back towards Lena. 

She leapt into Kara’s arms with no warning. Kara tried her best, she really did, but the two women went tumbling to the hardwood. 

“Oh shit, Kara, are you OK? I’m _so_ sorry!” 

The wind having been knocked out of her, Kara needed a moment to catch her breath before replying. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m OK.” She wheezed some more. “Sorry for dropping you, though. Are _you_ all right?” 

“I’m fine, darling,” Lena assured her, “the only thing bruised is my ego.” She slid slightly off of Kara and snuggled up to her side. 

Kara raised an eyebrow in question. 

“I had halfway convinced myself you were Supergirl!” Lena laughed. “You have the same hair, and you resemble her without your glasses.” 

She snuck a hand under Kara’s shirt and ran her fingers over her abs. “You have all these _muscles_ despite your extremely questionable diet.” 

Lena moved her hand upwards to run a finger across Kara’s eyebrow. “You even have a really similar scar—” 

Kara looked guiltier and guiltier the longer Lena talked, and finally had to interrupt. “Hey, Lena?” 

“…Yes?” 

“Have you ever heard of a solar flare?” 


End file.
